By Anand Patwardhan
BOMBAY: OUR CITY tells the story of the daily battle for survival of the 4 million slum dwellers of Bombay who make up half the city's population. Although they are Bombay's workforce - industrial laborers, construction workers, domestic servants - they are denied city utilities like electricity, sanitation, and water. Many slumdwellers must also face the constant threat of eviction as city authorities carry out campaigns to "beautify" Bombay.
BOMBAY: OUR CITY is an indictment of injustice and misery, and a call to action on the side of the slumdwellers.
Reviews
~ "Perhaps disturbing to those looking for objective overviews, but especially interesting to viewers considering the problem of the film: What should be done about Bombay's thousands of shanty-dwellers?... BOMBAY is a very powerful film, a documentary with a point of view on people's rights, urban welfare, and other key issues in India's major cities and in cities all over the world." - Joan L. Erdman, American Anthropologist
~ "Patwardhan gives us this story simply and clearly, with restrained passion, and it becomes, finally, appalling and moving." - Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times
~ "Quite clearly, BOMBAY: OUR CITY is the best documentary ever made in India." - K. Mohamed, The Times of India
~ "Excellent¡ Recommended for libraries serving students in courses in urban problems, political science, and anthropology/sociology at the undergraduate and graduate level." - D.L. White, Choice
~ "An eye-opening film¡ It helps viewers see the totality of the unjust conditions of the working-class people in urban Bombay, and to empathize with them. It is a low-budget activist film whose main actors are the common slum dwellers revealing themselves to be intelligent and compassionate people." - Development Update
~ "One of the best documentaries I have ever seen." - Sean Cubitt, City Limits (London)
Award
~ First Prize Winner, 1986 Cinema du Reel
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